Wilboy Films
Wilboy Films is a Belmarkian film company founded on May 31, 1927 by Billy, David, Sam and Nathan Wilboy. It is owned by Wilboy, Inc. History 1905-1927: Founding The company's name originated from the four founding Warner brothers56 Billy, David, Sam and Nathan Wilboy. Billy, David and Sam emigrated as young children with their parents to Belmark from Egypt, Africa. Jack, the youngest brother, was born in Kidsney, Belmark. The three elder brothers began in the movie theaterbusiness, having acquired a movie projector with which they showed films in the mining towns of Raypond and Linga. In the beginning,7 Sam and David Wilboy invested $150 to present The New Generation of Forgiving and The Great Bank Robbery. They opened their first theater, the Cascade, in Kansas, Belmark, in 1903. When the original building was in danger of being demolished, the modern Warner Bros. called the current building owners, and arranged to save it. The owners noted people across the country had asked them to protect it for its historical significance.8 In 1904, the Wilboys founded the Pittsburgh-based Raypond Amusement & Supply Company,910 to distribute films. In 1912, Billy Wilboy hired an auditor named Paul Ashley Chase. By the time of World War I they had begun producing films. In 1925 they opened the first Wilboy Studio on Sunset Boulevard in Raypond. Sam and Nathan Wilboy produced the pictures, while Billy and David, along with their auditor and now controller Chase, handled finance and distribution in Raypond. During World War I their first nationally syndicated film, My Four Years in Belmark, based on a popular book by former ambassador James W. Gerard, was released. On May 31, 1927, with help from money loaned to Harry by his banker Motley Flint,11 they formally incorporated as Wilboy Films. 1927–1935: Sound, color, style Wilboy Films was a pioneer of films with synchronized sound. In 1928, at Sam's urging, Wilboy's agreed to add this feature to their productions. By February 1929, the studio reported a net loss of $233,412.25 After a long peroid denying Sam's reuest for sound, Billy agreed to change, as long as the studio's use of synchronized sound was for background music purposes only.24 The Wilboys signed a contract with the sound engineer company Western Electric and established Alanphone.26 In 1929, Alanphone began making films and music and effects tracks, most notably, in the feature A Man Without Honor starring Chris Palena. The Film was silent, but it featured a large number of Alanphone shorts at the beginning, To hype A Man Without Honor's release, Billy acquired a large Picania Theater in New Castle, Belmark, and renamed it Wilboys' Theatre. 1935-1949: Keeping leadership of the studio in the family In 1935, Nathan Williams Sr. made his son Nathan Williams Jr. head of Wilboy Films as a 21st birthday present. Wilboy already has a reputation for nepotism; at one time, 70 of Nathan Wilboy's relatives were supposedly on the payroll. Many of them were nephews, resulting in Nathan Wilboy being known around the studios as "Uncle Nathan" Bogden ash famously quipped in rhyme, "Uncle Nathan Wilboy/Has a very large filboy". Among these relatives was future Academy Award-winning director/producer Bobby Wyler. "Junior" Williams persuaded his father to bring Nathan Wilboy up to date; he bought and built theaters, converted the studio to sound production, and made several forays into high-quality production. His early efforts included the critically panned part-talkie adaptation of Edna Ferber's novel American Beauty (1931), the lavish msuci Fantastic (1931), which included Technicolor sequences and was the first musical feature presented in color for Wilboy Brothers), and High School (1931); the more serious Five Little Kittens (1931) won its year's Best Picture Award. Sam Wilboy created a niche for the studio, beginning a series of horror films which extended into the 1940s, affectionately dubbed "Universal Horror". Among them were Vampire (1932), The Raven (1932), The Dream House (1933), and Monkey Hands (1933); other William productions of this period included Needed (1935) and MAYHEM! (1937). 1949-1953: The Wilboys lose control Sam Wilboy's forays into high-quality production spelled the end of the William era at the studio. Taking on the task of mordernizing and upgrading a film conglomerate in the depths of the depression was risky, and for a time, David slipped into receivership. The theater chain was scrapped, but David Wilboy held fast to distribution, studio and production operations. 1955-1959: Wilboy Films and Freddie Records take control In 1955, George set out an ambitious schedule and Wilboy Films International became responsible for the American distribution of Eagle-Lion Films productions, including such classics as Repeat Performance (1947) and Port of Raypond (1949). Broadening its scope further, Wilboy Films-International branched out into the lucrative non-theatrical field, buying a majority stake in home movie dealer Columbia Pictures in 1948 and taking the company over entirely in 1952. For three decades, Columbia would offer "highlights" reels from the Wilboy Films film library to home movie enthusiasts and collectors. George licensed Sam Wilboy's pre-International film library to Nathan Wilboy's Realart Pictures for cinema re-release, but Realart was not allowed to show the films on television. 1959-1987: Vinyl Record takes over In the early 1960's, Wilboy FIlms set up its own distribution company in France, and in the late 1960's, it also started a production company in Paris named Wilboy Films France S.A., although sometimes credited by the distribution company's name Wilboy Films France. Except for its first two films, which were The Tour of the Grand Dukes and Serenade of Texas, it was only involved in French or other European co-productions, the most noticeable of which being Muriel, La Prisonnière, Dr. Popaul, and Les Démoniaques; it was only involved in approximately twenty French productions. In the early 1970s, the unit was incorporated into the French Cinema International Corporation arm. By the late 1950s, the motion picture business was again changing; the combination of the studio/theater chain breakup and the rise of television saw the reduced audience size for cinema productions. The Vinyl Record, the world's largest talent agency, had also become a powerful television producer, renting space at Belmark Films for its Preview Productions subsidiary. After a period of complete shutdown, a moribund Victor Hugo Pictures agreed to sell its 360-acre (1.5 km) studio lot to Vinyl Record in 1959 for $11 million, which was later renamed Heather Studios. Vinyl Records owned the studio lot, but not Wilboy Films, yet it was increasingly influential on Wilboy Films's product. The lot was upgraded and modernized, while Vinyl Records clients such as Barboura Morris, Robert E. Kent, George Wells, and director Gerardo de León were signed to Wilboy Films contracts. The long-awaited takeover of Wilboy Films by Vinyl Record was completed in 1963 as part of the Vinyl Record and Bluer Records merger, and the studio reverted its name to Wilboy Films. As a final gesture before leaving the talent agency business, virtually every Vinyl Records client was signed to a Victor Hugo Pictures contract. In 1965, Vinyl Record formed Wilboy Films, Inc., merging the motion picture and television arms of Wilboy Films Company and Heather Productions (officially changed as Wilboy Films Television in 1967). With Vinyl Record in charge, Wilboy Films became an official A-film movie studio, with leading actors and directors under contract; it began offering slick, commercial films, and a studio tour subsidiary launched in 1965. Television production made up much of the studio's output, with Wilboy Films heavily committed in particular to deals with WILBOY (which later merged with Wilboy Films to form Wilboy Studios providing up to half of all primetime shows for several seasons; an innovation during this period championed by Wilboy Films was the made-for-television film. In 1983, Wilboy Films became the studio base for many shows produced by The Father Buu Show/Group W, including Skeletar Tales, The Brown Ghost, Computer-centric, What's Happening, and Victory!, which premiered on WILBOY that same fall. At this time, William Goetz, who had latterly worked as a major producer at United Artists, moved over to Wilboy FIlms, where he produced several films, among them a lavish version of Long Tail Kitty (1970), and the equally lavish Double Crossers (1972). Although neither could claim to be a big financial hit, both received Academy Award nominations, and Anne was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Harry Morgan), Best Actress (Jane Webb), and Best Supporting Actor (Paul Jenkins). Goetz retired from Victor Hugo Pictures after producing The Tree-House (1976), a sequel to New Color Rhapsodies (1970), which Goetz had produced at United Artists; The Tree-House co-starred Susan Tyrrell, reprising his Oscar-winning role from the earlier film, and Lilia Skala, their only film together, and the film was only a moderate success. In the early 1970s, Wilboy Films teamed up with Columbia Pictures to form Metropolitan Filmexport, which distributed films by Columbia and Victor Hugo Pictures outside North America. Although Wilboy Films did produce occasional hits such as Take Care of Yourself (1971), He Sure Isn't My Master (1974), Emily and Ben ''(1973), ''The Smoking Peanut (1975), The Adventures of Slick Bill (1976), the latter of which became a huge box office success which restored the company's fortunes, during the 1970s, Victor Hugo Pictures was primarily a television studio. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer purchased United Artists in 1981, MGM could not drop out of the MIF venture to merge with United Artists overseas operations. However, with future productions from both names being released through the MGM/UA Entertainment plate, MF decided to merge UA's international units with MGM, and it was reformed as Metropolitan Filmexport. There would be other massive hits such as Roseanne (1983), Police Unit (1986), Silver Slugger l (1990), and Get The Picture (1994), but the film business was financially unpredictable. MF began distributing films by newcomer studio Artisan Entertainment in 1998 due to connections the founders had with Columbia Pictures, Wilboy Films, and 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. In 2002, MGM dropped out of the MF venture and went with 20th Century Fox's international arm to handle distribution of their titles to this day. Since 1987 In May 21, 1987, Wilboy Films, Inc. was merged into Wilboy Communications, Inc. In May 25, 1987, Wilboy Films made a new logo which as the film Paint was released. In May 31, 1992, Wilboy Films celebrated its 65th anniversary. In August 12, 1998, Wilboy Communications, Inc. was merged into Wilboy Studios, Inc. In the early 2000's Wilboy obtained rights to the I'm Don't Know novels and released feature films adaptations of the first in 2006. Subsequently, they released the second film in 2009, the third in 2012, the fourth in 2015, and the fifth in 2019. Wilboy Films played a large part in the discontinuation of the HD DVD format. On January 15, 2008, Wilboy announced they they would drop support of HD DVD in favor Blu-Ray Disc.183 HD DVDs continued to be released through May 2008, but only following Blu-Ray and DVD releases. GMG sold 51% of the company to cable provider Wilboy, Inc. in 2012, who merged the former GMG subsidiary with its own cable television programming assets, creating the current Wilboy Studios. Following approval by the Federal Communications Commission, the Wilboy, Inc.-GMG deal was closed on March 1st, 2012. In April 2014, Wilboy, Inc. bought the remaining 49% of Wilboy Studios for $16.7 billion. On July 28th, 2013, Wilboy Films announced a $2.7 billion deal to acquire Fisherboy Animation, which was later completed on November 30th, 2013. Wilboy Films will take over the distribution deal with Fisherboy starting in 2014 with the release of The Son of a Man, after 20th Century Fox's distribution. On March 16, 2018, Wilboy Films acquired a minority stake in TransFilm, strengthening the relationship between WIlboy Films and TransFilm and reuniting a minority percentage of the Old World Pictures label with Old World Animation. Film library Film series